Christian Zionists, wealthy Jews, and the military-industrial complex give them the power
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Israel gets so much privileged treatment from the US government (USG), that some have called it the 51st State. But no one state has such power over the others. The Israeli government actually takes the part of a fourth branch of USG, co-equal with the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. They don’t control the US 100%, but they have enough power to get what they want.
Israel’s special status was on clear display when their PM Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the US congress for the fourth time last week. After American Senators and Representatives gave him 55 standing ovations in a one hour pitch for weapons and for war with Iran, journalist Jonathan Kuttab wrote, “As I listened to the speech and observed the nauseating standing ovations, I could not recall such a display of servility even in authoritarian regimes.”
Others compared Netanyahu’s speech to a state of the union address by an American President, which it certainly resembled in its power dynamics. Netanyahu proclaimed that 21st century reality pits Israel and the US against a large part of the world in a battle to protect ‘civilization’ from ‘barbarism.’ We’re on his side whether we want to be or not.
Democrats and Republicans, legislators and administrators agree: Israel has a uniquely close relationship with America. They are “our greatest ally,” despite their doing nothing allies typically do. They don’t send troops to support America’s wars; they don’t fund relief efforts when there’s a disaster. Instead, they receive billions in military aid and pull American troops into combat throughout the Middle East, getting them killed in places like Jordan, Iraq, and Syria. Americans serve to protect Israeli interests as well as our corporations’ own access to oil and gas. It becomes hard to tell where Israel leaves off and the US starts.
Many US government officials advocate for making the relationship even closer. At the recent Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, journalist Michael Tracy asked conservative congressman Andy Barr of Kentucky if massive US military, economic, and political support for Israel conflicted with his stated ‘America-first’ ideology. Barr declared, “Being pro-Israel IS ‘America First. Plain and simple.” Barr called Israel “America’s bulwark against terrorism, our forward operating base against radical Islam,” and a fundamental part of America’s “Judeo-Christian values.”
Recently, two Congressmen Guy Rechtenstaler R PA, and Max Miller R OH, (an outspoken “America-firster”) proposed legislation giving Americans who enlist in the Israeli defense forces (IDF) the same GI benefits promised to those in the US military.
Many state and local governments in the US invest their money in Israel bonds, money loaned at low interest directly to the Israeli government to fund weapons, universities, settlement, and whatever. The money could earn more elsewhere; the intention is purely so support Israel.
Similarly, a number of American nonprofits fund illegal settlements in the West Bank. NGOs like Central Fund for Israel (CFI) , The Jewish National Fund USA, the Irving and Cherna Moskowitz Foundation and many others have tax-exempt 501 c 3 status , meaning American taxpayers involuntarily pick up the costs for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Get it? Our leaders don’t think of Israel as a foreign country. Their wars are our wars. It’s them and us — along with the UK, Germany, and a couple of other European powers — against the world. This is a battle most of us don’t want and one we cannot win.
How Israel became the fourth branch
The US supported Israel at their founding in 1948 but not in the slavish way they do now. When Israel allied with the UK and France to keep the Suez Canal from Egypt in 1956, President Eisenhower stopped the war with a couple of phone calls. He saw Israel as a foreign country. He wanted good relations with them, but also wanted connection with the Arab world and peace in the region called the Middle East.
Israeli leaders wanted more than that and set out on a long campaign to gain the special status they have now. This strategy has three main parts.
- They created the famous Israel lobby, a large web of organizations and rich individuals who are able to turn out volunteers for political causes and donate huge sums to politicians who support Israel. Israel advocate billionaire and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson was the biggest donor to the Republican Party until his death, and billionaire casino owner Haim Saban is the biggest contributor to the Democrats. Now that Adelson is gone, his widow Miriam has taken over his role and been given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her donations to Donald Trump.
When a politician doesn’t back Israel, the Lobby will find and fund candidates to run against them, get them smeared in the press, and in many cases make it impossible for them to stay in office. They did that to Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York in this year’s primary and are spending tens of millions trying to do it to Cori Bush of Missouri now..
2. Along with their rich Jewish donors, Israel conjured up the powerful Christian Zionist movement. Christian Zionism existed before Jewish Zionism began in the 19th Century, but it was not an organized force in America until 2006. In that year, Israel lobbyists recruited right wing televangelist pastor John Hagee of San Antonio and helped him create Christians United for Israel (CUFI).
CUFI once claimed 9 million members and now says they have 5.5 million activists — enough to be a major force in American politics.
CUFI’s co-founder and first Executive Director was David Brog, a Jewish lawyer who practiced in Israel, and a third cousin of former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. He supports various far right causes, and he directed CUFI for nine years until 2015.
CUFI’s website faithfully reposts every Israeli propaganda statement, and its members call, write, and vote to pressure Congress to support Israel in everything it wants. They believe that Israel’s expansion, the return of all Jews to Palestine, and the rebuilding of the 3rd Jewish Temple will bring about the second coming of Christ.
(This belief explains why Israeli settlers and troops keep breaking into and defiling the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. They want that site for the third temple.)
3. Along with wealthy Jews and evangelical Christians, the military industrial complex (MIC) enables the total integration of Israel into the US power structure. Powerful economic bonds unite Israel and the MIC. War corporations like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon need wars to promote sales and profits. Israel provides the wars by antagonizing near-neighbors. They maintain pretend rivalries with rich Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, with a pretend arms race requiring the selling of US arms to both sides.
The present slaughter in Gaza has already earned the MIC over $14 billion through military aid to Israel. Bombs, weapons, ammo and equipment are bought from the MIC, given to Israel, and dropped on universities, refugee camps and tent cities full of Palestinian civilians.
This is how you get senators and congressional reps to give 55 standing ovations to a foreign leader engaging in an active genocide. It helps that Netanyahu looks like an American, speaks like an American, actually lived in Philadelphia in his teen years and attended college at MIT. Israelis are “just like us,” while the people they occupy are often darker-skinned and don’t speak English with American accents.
The present slaughter in Gaza has already earned the MIC over $14 billion through military aid to Israel.
What the Fourth Branch Gets Us
USA/Israel connections grow ever deeper and leads to horrible results: endless wars, genocide, and people hating America around the world. Some may think Israel’s behavior is uniquely awful, but actually, everything they do follows the American playbook: the genocide of indigenous people, the constant expansion through war, the preaching of democracy and freedom while denying basic rights to large sections of the population.
Understanding the nature of the US/Israel connection now is critical because the world is breaking free of American control. If we continue to insist on colonial dominance, as Israel does in its limited piece of the Empire, it will lead us to economic collapse and world war. It will turn us into the monsters we see in Gaza. We have to learn to get along with other peoples and treat them equally, something neither the US nor Israel seems willing to do.
Disbanding the Fourth Branch
The unholy integration of Israel into American government will get us all killed. We need to organize to resist both sides of this lethal combo, which has already taken over the Departments of Defense and State. The neoconservative think tanks, many of them run by Israel-firsters, have already won there and in the intelligence agencies. The result is endlessly escalating wars that could go nuclear any day.
Americans and Israelis need to decide. Are we the separate, special, world-dominators of Zionist and American exceptionalist legend, or are we part of the larger world that has existed for thousands of years before European colonialism created both our countries?
Can we rejoin humanity?
I can imagine this will be a hard sell for White Americans just as rejecting Zionism is for Jews. But there is no other choice. Colonialism is ending anyway, and the only question is whether it will leave a livable world when it’s gone. The three branches of government in our constitution were enough. Let’s get back to them and drop the US/lsraeli Empire.
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